Authors: Allen Drury
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Genre Fiction, #Political, #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Thrillers & Suspense, #Spies & Politics, #Assassinations, #Thrillers
But at this his father, who had been silently studying them all, intervened with a calm parental firmness.
“Hal, you will be quiet, please. I understand the Secretary’s feelings. I understand everybody’s feelings. We’re in a very tough situation. I’m taking a very great gamble—the gamble that before they really realize how weak we are, the tide will have turned and we’ll be on top again. The gamble that this moment will come before we begin to run out of arms, supplies, matériel, ships, planes, guns, tanks, missiles … men.”
“And how long do we have to prove out the gamble, Mr. President?” Cullee Hamilton asked quietly. The President gave him a long and troubled stare.
“Not long enough,” he said at last. “But it seems to me it must be done.”
“Very well,” William Abbott said quietly. “As long as you have really thought it through, Mr. President; as long as this is
really
what you want to do. Not an impulse, not a flare of temper, not—if you will forgive me—what is known in some influential circles as a ‘typical Orrin Knox off-the-cuff reaction.’ But a cold sober judgment.”
The President gave him too a long, troubled look, and then spoke with a finality that closed the subject.
“We’re in a corner, Bill. They’ve finally made that mistake, the one that we’ve all tried to avoid for so long. And now there’s no way to go but straight out.”
“Right,” Bill Abbott said crisply, and turned to the rest.
“Well, gentlemen—Madam Ambassador and gentlemen—I’d say that about does it. Let’s get started on that statement. Mr. Secretary”—he turned to Bob Leffingwell, tense and worried but determined, as they all were now—“why don’t you transcribe for us? Mr. President, what do you want us to say?”
“I think,” he said, feeling as though he were very high on some mountaintop, breathing very thin air, not at all sure he would make it safely down but committed beyond recall, “that you might say—”
Top congressional leaders back Knox war moves. Abbott, Munson, Strickland pledge all-out support in “crisis forced upon us by communist aggression.” Many on hill express misgivings about action. Battle over leaderships looms in both houses.… president names mrs. Jason to UN post, orders U.S. resolution condemning red drive introduced in security council.… U.S. counter-offensives in Africa and Panama make little headway in first day’s fighting. Allies harsh on Panama blockade.… anti-war groups muster for mammoth demonstration at Capitol. First polls show many “appalled” by belligerent response of new president.
“We are appalled,” the
Times
said sternly, “by the belligerent response of our new President to the Sino-Soviet drive to restore some semblance of stability and democratic government in both Gorotoland and Panama.
“We would suggest that he is reacting hysterically, and perhaps fatally, to a dangerous but perfectly understandable reaction on their part to inexcusable United States meddling in the internal affairs of these two troubled lands.
“Orrin Knox has been in office twenty-four hours and already he is deepening our commitment to overseas war. He is also flirting, as such moves nowadays always flirt, with the dreadful possibility of atomic retaliation. And for what? A little country far away, in the heart of Africa, whose affairs are no concern of ours, whose people, desperately anxious for democracy, have a right to our support, not our obstruction. And a country, admittedly nearer at hand, whose people also yearn for democracy and for control of the Canal which, in justice and in right, belongs to them to do with as they see fit.…”
“Perhaps the most comforting thing about Orrin Knox,” the
Post
remarked with a savage jocularity, “is his utter predictability. Twenty-four hours—twenty-four hours? Scarcely twenty-four minutes!—and up he comes with a typical Orrin Knox off-the-cuff reaction. And in this instance, a typical off-the-cuff reaction that could very well blow the world to hell in a hand basket before another twenty-four hours.
“We do not condone the violence of the Sino-Soviet response to endless American meddling in the internal affairs of Panama and Gorotoland, but we can see why they felt they must act. The response of Orrin Knox to their response indicates why they felt they must move quickly and decisively before he could thoroughly muster U.S. power for further meddling. Had they waited any longer he might have been able to mount a real counter-offensive instead of the apparently doomed gesture now under way. And then the fat would really have been in the fire.
“He has appointed Mrs. Ceil Jason to the UN, and today a U.S. resolution condemning Russia and China will be introduced by her in the Security Council. This will of course bring a counter-resolution from the other side condemning American action. This in turn will be followed, we predict, by a speedy denunciation of U.S. interventionism. And then, if our brave new President has the ounce of sense we still like to hope he has, he will take the face-saving opportunity offered and speedily withdraw from his belligerence and let the peoples of the world decide their own destinies without his imperial supervision.”
Walter Dobius, more concerned with long-range implications, as he always prided himself he was, laid it on the line to his readers from “Salubria.”
“Orrin Knox has thrown down the gauntlet, much more rapidly and dangerously than anyone would have believed, to all who believe in peace and the sane resolution of the conflicts of men. Now if world peace is to be preserved the severest correctives must be applied—by the Soviets and the Chinese on the field of battle and in the United Nations, and by his own people in the Congress of the United States.
“Most observers here in the capital, stunned by this new display of the famed Knox belligerence, have no doubt but that the decision of battle will go against it. Most hope the decision will be rendered with merciful speed before too many more American boys are sacrificed on the bloody ancient altar of balance-of-power diplomacy. Any more, of course, is ‘too many more.’ Unfortunately some are already lost. We must pray that events will place an immediate limit on further tragically useless deaths.
“There is, however, an aspect more long-range and more fundamental for the future, and that must be decided this week in the Congress. No doubt motivated by reasons of long-time political loyalty rather than good judgment, the ex-President of the United States, who was before, and who aspires to be again, the Speaker of the House; the Majority Leader of the United States Senate; and the Minority Leader of the United States Senate have joined the President in his dangerous gamble. They have pledged him the full support of Congress.
“It is a support, the facts suggest, which they no longer control and can no longer deliver. And a prediction may be ventured that this will be made speedily apparent when all three of these gentlemen seek re-election today to their leadership posts.
“They will be judged by their peers on the issue they have chosen to stand on—all-out support for the President.
“It seems highly likely at this writing that they will be roundly defeated for it.”
And Frankly Unctuous, speaking from the Senate Radio-TV Gallery in a pre-session telecast, tied it all together in one of those smoothly rolling packages for which he received one hundred thousand smackers a year.
“Belligerence on the battlefield—and probable defeat there, in the United Nations and in the Congress. These are the prospects that await the brand-new Presidency of Orrin Knox.
“So, tragically, begins his opportunity to change his old warlike image, seize the torch passed on to him by the fallen Edward M. Jason and emerge as the world’s hope for peace.
“It is a sad and discouraging commentary on the arrogance of one man.
“No one in Washington, or anywhere else as far as we can discover, condones the perhaps overly harsh Sino-Soviet decision to punish American intervention in Panama and Gorotoland with a swift and decisive move to aid the freedom-loving elements in those two disturbed countries. But by the same token, no one—save a little handful of political faithfuls who may be facing consignment to history’s dustbin—approves of the violently over-reactive response of our new President.
“Orrin Knox could have gone to the United Nations and asked for its support in this new crisis. Given past American intransigence in the face of UN demands for withdrawal from Gorotoland and Panama, this might not have been forthcoming. But at least it would have been the peaceable, the constructive, the responsible method of approach. And it is possible that he might have won a signal victory there and emerged, greatly strengthened, to commence really genuine peace negotiations with Moscow and Peking.
“Now this, in all probability, will never be.
“In Congress, had he not forced ex-President Abbott and Senator Munson to go along with his war policy, he might well have secured their re-election to the leadership posts in House and Senate. Thus he would have assured himself a firm legislative foundation for a reasonable program.
“Now, tied to his falling banner and his failing cause, they will very likely be defeated for the leaderships. Thus he will face heavy problems in dealing with new and less obliging lieutenants on the Hill.
“Washington is talking already of what is being called ‘the tragedy of Orrin Knox.’ Its theme is false pride. Its fatal flaw is arrogance. Its impact upon all our lives may well make it the tragedy of America.”
And in similar language spoke once more all those vocal, vitriolic and well-publicized citizens for whom Supermedia provided the forum and set the pace: so yapped the pack from all its many burrows across the land.
“My God,” Lafe Smith said to a silent Ceil as, closely guarded by the Secret Service, they entered the doors of the Secretariat of the United Nations in New York through solid walls of jeering demonstrators shortly before noon, “is there no perspective left anywhere in this crazy land?”
And “My God,” Bob Munson remarked to Warren Strickland as they prepared to go in and meet the press on the floor of the Senate just prior to the opening bell, “doesn’t
anyone
try to be fair to anyone anymore?”
Knowing the answers as they did, all were somewhat prepared for, though unable to reconcile themselves to, the events of that tense, unhappy day.
2
At the entrance of the Delegates’ Lounge they met as they had so often met before: the ambassadors of Great Britain, France and India and the leaders of the delegation of the United States. This time, as always, voices hesitated in the crowded chamber, eyes swiveled, thoughts were distracted as attention focused feverishly on the little group that stood, its members somewhat awkward, embarrassed and hesitant with one another, just inside the door of the enormous many-windowed room.
For a moment they eyed one another somewhat warily. Then Lord Claude Maudulayne stepped forward cordially and held out his hand to Ceil.
“Madam Ambassador, may I congratulate you most sincerely upon your appointment. You add a note of grace and beauty desperately needed in these drab and difficult corridors.”
“Oh, my, yes!” Krishna Khaleel exclaimed fervently. “You are much the most beautiful thing that has ever happened to the United Nations, Mrs. Jason.
Much
the most beautiful!”
“And possibly,” Raoul Barre said dryly, “the most intelligent. Lafe, we are delighted to have you with us again.”
“Yes,
indeed,”
Krishna Khaleel agreed. “Even on so”—he paused delicately—“so difficult an occasion.”
“Which you will no doubt make even more difficult, K.K.,” Lafe said. “How about finding a chair for the most beautiful ambassador in the world?”
“We usually have good luck by the window,” Claude Maudulayne suggested, offering Ceil his arm, which she accepted with a smile. And now chatting and joking in their old, relaxed way despite the uneasy tensions that underlay their persiflage, they moved across the room through many smiling faces and warmly extended hands which Ceil took with a series of dazzling smiles that obviously overwhelmed their intently observing audience.
When they were seated with their coffee at a table looking north upon the bleak frozen river and the bleak winter city, she tossed her long blonde hair back from her face and looked at Lord Maudulayne with an ironic expression.
“I would like to be able to accept the congratulations, except that for the moment I’m here under somewhat shaky pretenses. I haven’t been confirmed yet, you know.”
“But surely,” the British Ambassador said, turning to Lafe, “there’s no doubt—?”
“No,” Lafe said, looking annoyed. “Just a nasty debate from a few hotheads, probably, leaving a bad taste in everybody’s mouth and casting a sour shadow on her first day here. It’s too bad.”
“Of course,” K.K. suggested in a wistful tone, “if things were not so—so
unhappy
right now, there would be no need for a nasty debate, would there? And of course if dear Orrin had not been so—so
precipitate …
” His voice trailed away, still wistful. Lafe took him up on it sharply.
“Now, see here, K.K.: spare me more of this pious stuff from India. The issue is massive new aggression by the Soviet Union and China which Orrin felt he had to stop. I agree with him and so does Mrs. Jason.”
“But not, I think,” Raoul Barre observed gently, “a majority of the United Nations. Have you seen the Soviet resolution?”
“We just got in,” Lafe said. “Have you seen ours?”
“No,” the French Ambassador admitted, “but I doubt if it has much of a chance.”
“There is, of course,” Claude Maudulayne said, “the matter of the blockade. If it were not for that, possibly—”
“No ‘possibly,’” Lafe said, “no way. We’re licked on this already, Claude, we always have been, as long as the world is upside down as it is. But we have to keep trying to reassert a little perspective into the historical record, even if it means another lengthy review of exactly why we are in Gorotoland and Panama, and exactly why the Russians and the Chinese are attempting to drive us out.”
“There’s no time for that,” Raoul Barre remarked. “The mood is too ugly and the impatience with the United States too great. It
is
regrettable, Mrs. Jason, that you must face such hostility as you are going to face on your first day here. But as Ambassador Khaleel says, the misfortune arises from your own President.”
“How can you say that?” she asked quietly, studying him carefully with her beautiful dark eyes. “He acted in response to aggression, he didn’t start it.”
“But initially—” Raoul Barre began. She leaned forward.
“No, not ‘initially,’ Mr. Ambassador. You know what happened initially. Why try to pretend it was not so?”
“Madam Ambassador—” he began.
“Mr.
Ambassador,” she said. “You tell me why you pretend it was not so.
“Oh,” he said with a sudden impatience, “we know about the attacks on your missionaries in Gorotoland, the interference with your attempts to find oil and gain a monopoly on it. We know you are afraid of another possible Communist take-over on your doorstep in Panama, of possible Communist control of the Canal. We know all about those things. They do not matter here.”
“The truth has to matter somewhere,” she said.
“Not here,” Lafe agreed dourly. “Not here. And the issue wasn’t oil, as you very well know, Raoul. It was murder of defenseless people. And it isn’t because we want to benefit ourselves alone that we want to internationalize the Canal and keep it out of Communist hands. Sure, we have an interest in our own security—I should hope—but many more things enter into it.” He shook his head and shrugged in sudden disgust. “But you know all that. You
know
all that. And you’re right: it doesn’t matter here.”
“Then where does it?” Ceil asked quietly. “Where will it, ever?”
“If the Communists succeed in taking the world,” Lafe said glumly, “it never will anywhere. All opposing historical records will be destroyed, all opposing books will be burned, a new history will be written. I can see it now—
The New History,
subtitled
The Death of the Mind.”
“If, then, as you imply,” Raoul Barre said with some asperity, “it is so vital for the views of the United States to prevail if freedom is to be saved, why does the United States so constantly put itself in a position to be so effectively attacked by our Communist friends? Why do you do things such as Orrin has just done?”
“Such as
Orrin
has just done, my God!” Lafe exclaimed angrily. “This is new history, and instant history, with a vengeance.
Who
launched the new offensive in Gorotoland and Panama, just yesterday?
Who
reignited the wars?
Who
took the actions to which the President is only responding? My God, how can you people here do such instantaneous forgetting?…But of course,” he said more quietly, “you don’t. You know. It’s just that to face up to the Communists is too difficult, too dangerous, too likely to create obligations for counteraction that you just don’t want to contemplate and undertake. You
don’t want
to remember history, even the history of literally yesterday, because to remember would require action against those responsible. And you are afraid.”
“And what does the United States offer,” Raoul demanded, while around the room, observing their now tense and solemn faces, many paused to whisper and to watch, “to help us not be afraid? Withdrawals everywhere in the past few years, arms cutbacks, reduced military strength, inability to enforce your policies, increasing weakness in the face of Communist advances, simple lack of preserving the armed strength required to keep yourselves effective in the world. Why should we join you in strong actions opposing the Communists when you have so little left to oppose them with yourselves? You can’t help yourselves, let alone help us. Why should we endanger ourselves for you? You are no longer able to protect us from the consequences.”
“We are still able to react decisively,” Lafe said, controlling his temper with an obvious effort, “and we are doing so. Any nation which bases its policies upon the assumption that we will fail will be making a grievous mistake, I assure you. We continue to have a strong President with the will to act, and from now on, I believe, things are going to get better.”
“Better for what?” Lord Maudulayne inquired moodily, and at his side the Indian Ambassador echoed, “Yes, yes! Better for what?”
“Better for all of you,” Lafe said bluntly, “because without us, still, what would become of you?”
“It is very kind of America, dear Lafe,” Krishna Khaleel said lightly, “to save us all so regularly, and with such modesty. I suppose it can only happen because America never stops to ask us if we
want
to be saved—at least, from whatever it is America seems to think she is saving us.
My
government is not worried about the Communists, because we are not aligned with anyone. India will survive to watch you all go down, if that should be the case, though of course we do not wish it for anyone. Still, history you know”—his tone trailed off—“it
does
carry certain built-in dangers for those too proud and too arrogant.…”
“You see what you are up against,” Lafe said to Ceil. “It will be an education.”
“It is already,” she said with a humorless little smile. “I feel I’m getting a cram course, right here.”
“I hope it is preparing you for the next few hours,” Lafe said grimly, “because they aren’t going to be easy.”
“How is Jimmy Fry, old boy?” Claude Maudulayne inquired, deliberately changing the subject to the one he knew would distract his angry colleague from America. At the mention of the handsome, retarded son whom the late Senator Harold Fry of West Virginia, then chief U.S. delegate, had in effect bequeathed to Lafe, the expression of the Senator from Iowa softened and became less tense.
“He’s still up the Hudson at Oak Lawn sanitarium, but I’m going to bring him down to Washington tomorrow. I’ve got a new house on Foxhall Road, you know, and the doctors say it would probably be better for him to be there with me.”
“A house?” Krishna Khaleel inquired archly. “For bachelor Lafe, that dashing Romeo of Washington and the UN? Is there something in the wind that we don’t know about?”
“Dashing Romeo,” Lafe said, “is running down. I’m getting too old, K.K. Anyway, I’ve seen quite a bit of Mabel Anderson during the campaign, and I think she may be coming back to Washington pretty soon.”
“You know it!” K.K. said in a delighted tone, genuinely pleased by the thought of Mabel Anderson, widow of the late Senator Brigham Anderson of Utah, dead by his own hand during the bitter Senate battle over the first nomination of Robert A. Leffingwell to be Secretary of State, eighteen months ago. “Lafe, how wonderful for you! We will all be so pleased. When is the wedding?”
“Keep it to yourself, K.K.,” Lafe cautioned hastily, “and the rest of you, too, please. Strictly confidentially, she’s coming in next week and we expect to be married in a private ceremony as soon thereafter as it can be arranged.”
“Congratulations,” Raoul Barre said. “She is a very sweet girl.”
“A very fine one,” Lord Maudulayne agreed. “And a very fine thing you will be doing, for her, for yourself, for her daughter and for Jimmy. I know Kitty will join me in wishing all of you every possible happiness.”
“Thank you, Claude,” Lafe said. He shook his head, his expression abruptly somber again. “In such an era,” he said as if to himself.
“In such an era!”
“Shall we go in?” Raoul suggested pleasantly, ignoring his sudden change of mood. “It is almost time. Madam Ambassador”—he stood up with a gallant little bow and a charming smile—“will you deign to go in with France?”
“Perhaps I should ask the State Department what it will commit me to, first,” she said with an answering smile, rising and taking his proffered arm.
“Nothing too permanent,” Raoul said cheerfully, “because the debate is likely soon to separate us again.”
“Ha!” she said, giving him a quizzical look. “At least you’re honest.”
“All of us here try to be,” Krishna Khaleel said, burbling along behind as they made their way slowly out through the crowded room to join the colorful throng of the nations moving toward the Security Council. “We all try to be!”
“I’m afraid I am not so generous, K.K.,” Lord Maudulayne remarked with a wry little chuckle. “I would not agree that all of us try.”
Two hundred miles to the south, standing at his front center desk on the aisle to face the poised pencils and skeptical faces of the reporters who gathered there each noon for the regular pre-session press conference, the Majority Leader of the United States Senate found himself as gloomy and filled with foreboding as his young colleague from Iowa up at the United Nations.
He was uneasy, Bob Munson confessed to himself, uneasy and even apprehensive, for he did not know what this new Senate would do. Orrin’s margin of victory had been so narrow that he had barely managed to retain control of the Senate—and the control was only nominal, based on party label, not on any infusion of new Senatorial blood that would look kindly on his policies. It would be slippery going, the Majority Leader told himself: mighty slippery going. And the first step on the uncertain road would come right now in his opening remarks to the media, whose members were obviously ready to go for him with all the knives at their command.
“Senator,” UPI said, leading off the questioning, “we hear there’s going to be a real battle over the leadership. Are you confident you’ll win?”
“I’m always confident,” he said comfortably. “That’s my job. You boys and girls know that.”
“You don’t think your stand on the wars will have an adverse effect on your candidacy, then,” the
Times
suggested.
“It may,” he agreed calmly, “but that will have to be determined when we vote.”
“We hear a lot of the members are very upset by the latest turn of events,” the
Post
said.
“I’m very upset by Communist aggression myself,” he said promptly. There was a stirring in the group clustered around his desk and he thought he heard Warren Strickland, seated just across the aisle, suppress a snort.
“I think U.S. aggression is more to the point,” the
Post
said severely. Bob Munson studied him for a moment with deliberate skepticism.
“Oh, do you. Well, I don’t. I like to keep my priorities where they belong, not get them all mixed up for ideological purposes. The Communists moved first.”